The British Film Institute looked at 100 of the most famous Film Noirs and put together this handy infograph of the essential elements of the genre. They (rightfully so, in my opinion) named Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity the best and also most Noir of all Noir films. Check out the complete info graph on the link below...

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Time Out magazine asked a group of over seventy actors, including Oscar-winner Juliette Binoche, Trainwreck's Bill Hader and Brie Larson, and motion-capture king Andy Serkis, to name the ten best movies of all-time. They then took those lists and combined them to form a "definitive" (see: "odd") list of the 100 Best Movies of All-Time. Most of the usual suspects appear somewhere, though some of the rankings are a bit strange.

The Godfather landed at #2, just like it did on the BBC's list of the 100 Greatest American Films that came out last week. Citizen Kane, the film that topped the BBC's list, as well as most other lists of this type, came in all the way down at #39. So what monumental film knocked Charles Foster Kane off the top? Tootsie. Yep, the 1982 Dustin Hoffman comedy Tootsie was named the best movie of all-time. I know, right? Actors sure do love them some Dustin Hoffman. Guess I'm going to have to re-watch it, as the last couple times I've seen it it did not feel like it aged well at all.

Perhaps the most notable snub was the almost complete absence of Alfred Hitchcock films, whose only entry was Notorious at #62, while universally recognized classics like Vertigo and Psycho failed to make the list at all. There were quite a few other eye openers as well, as several little talked about films like The Celebration (#41), The Turin Horse (#51), The Sacrifice (#66), and A Room For Romeo Brass (#78) all made surprise appearances. Overall it's a very perplexing list, but then again any list like this is entirely subjective, so really who cares?

Thursday, July 23, 2015

Universal had 1.5 billion reasons to greenlight a Jurassic World sequel, and today they confirmed just that. The flick, slated for summer of 2018, will bring back leads Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, executive producer Steven Spielberg. Director and co-writer Colin Trevorrow is co-writing the screenplay, but Variety (who broke the story) did not specifically outline if he would direct as well, though it's likely.

Tuesday, July 21, 2015

Movie lists are a great way to strike up a conversation about what makes a great film, and what films meet those perceived standards. They are fun, kinda pointless, and sometimes really perturbing. Sometimes they confirm what most people already believe (Citizen Kane is pretty great), while sometimes shining a light on films that may have been overlooked in their time but deserve a second look.

The BBC recently polled a group of international critics to get their consensus on what the greatest American films of all-time are. “In
recognition of the astounding influence of the US on what remains the most
popular art-form worldwide, BBC Culture has polled 62 international film
critics to determine the 100 greatest American films of all time.” The results yield a crop of familiar favorites and some real headscratchers (Gone With the Wind next to Heaven's Gate?).

The top of the list is loaded with familiar faces like The Godfather, Vertigo, and of course Citizen Kane. Further down the list are some bold choices to say the least, with Orson Welles' Kane follow-up The Magnificent Ambersons astoundingly high at #11, even though most people have never actually seen Welles' original, much longer cut of the film. Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon appears at #27, well ahead of his Dr Strangelove (#42), and his Eyes Wide Shut (#61) also beat the more conventional choice of The Shining (#62).

The list is full of other surprises, like the avant-garde Meshes of the Afternoon (#40), the documentary Grey Gardens (#53), and the previously mentioned Heaven's Gate. That Michael Cimino film almost single-handedly ended the "New Hollywood" movement in American cinema because it bombed in such epic proportions, though like Welles' Ambersons a "Directors Cut" of the film has gained a cult following in the years since its original release.

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

The dynamic directing duo of Christopher Miller and Phil Lord have been tapped to direct the next Star Wars Anthology film, which will feature Han Solo. Here's the details from StarWars.com...

"CHRISTOPHER MILLER AND PHIL LORD TO HELM HAN SOLO ANTHOLOGY FILM
THE DUO BEHIND THE LEGO MOVIE WILL DIRECT AN EARLY TALE OF THE SMUGGLER-TURNED-HERO, WITH A SCREENPLAY BY LAWRENCE AND JON KASDAN."

"The next adventure in the Anthology series of Star Wars films will be directed by Christopher Miller and Phil Lord, whose credits include the critically acclaimed The LEGO Movie and Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, as well as 21 Jump Street and 22 Jump Street. Among the most sought-after filmmakers working today, the two have proven a formidable duo on the multiple films they’ve collaborated on and are looking forward to applying their unique creative chemistry to the Star Wars universe."

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Jurassic World held off Inside Out, Magic Mike XXL, Terminator: Genisys and Ted 2 to win its FOURTH straight weekend at the box office. This is only the third time this year a film has managed to pull that off at the domestic box office, after American Sniper and Furious 7 did the same earlier this year.

Saturday, July 4, 2015

This weekend's box office race is tighter than Channing Tatum's abs, with newcomers Magic Mike XXL and Terminator: Genisys trying to fight off holdovers Jurassic World, Inside Out and Ted 2 for 4th of July weekend supremacy. The Independence Day holiday has long been a competitive weekend for Hollywood, as many Americans try to beat the summer heat and head indoors to their local multiplex to check out the latest blockbuster.

I fondly remember spending many a Fourth of July in the mid-to-late nineties with friends at their summer house in Northern Minnesota and heading to the movie theater in Detroit Lakes to see the likes of Independence Day, Men in Black and Armageddon on the big screen. That was a pretty solid era to be a teenage boy at the movies.

Below is a list of the twenty highest grossing Independence Day weekends from 1982 to the present, adjusted for inflation. All data was found at BoxOfficeMojo.com

Friday, July 3, 2015

GREAT SCOTT!!! It's been thirty years since Robert Zemeckis gave us one the most adored films of all-time: Back to the Future. Starring 1980's darlings Michael J. Fox and Lea Thompson, and featuring unforgettable turns by Christopher Lloyd, Crispin Glover and Thomas F. Wilson, a classic 80's soundtrack and cameo from Huey Lewis, and executive produced by the Amblin super team of Steven Spielberg, Kathleen Kennedy and Frank Marshall, the film is loaded with memorable scenes and lines. The film's screenplay, co-written by Bob Gale, was one of the hottest properties in Hollywood history, and was voted one of the 101 greatest screenplays ever by the Writers Guild of America.

The film was a box office smash, becoming one of the ten highest-grossing films off all-time up until that point, joining the likes of E.T., Star Wars, and Jaws.

It would finish as the highest-grossing film of 1985, and to this day remains in the top ten in over a dozen different box office records according to BoxOfficeMojo.com.

Even adjusted for inflation, Back to the Future remains one of the biggest films of the 1980's.

The film also gave us one of the coolest cars in cinema history: Doc Brown's DeLorean time machine.